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One Lamp: Alternate History Stories from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
What if Gandhi and his army of pacifists faced down the Nazis? What would Philip K. Dick and Richard M. Nixon have said to one another? These and other wild imaginings of events that never occurred make up this prime collection of alternate histories. Written over fifty years, culled from the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, these 15 tales enthrall readers drawn to the fantastic, the meta-real, the might-have-been. Contributors include Sci-Fi/Fantasy legends C.M. Kornbluth, Ben Bova, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, Alfred Bester, and Poul Anderson.
352 pages, Paperback
First published August 12, 2003
14 people want to read
About the author
Gordon van Gelder
303 books27 followersGordon Van Gelder (born 1966) is an American science fiction editor. From 1997 until 2014, Van Gelder was editor and later publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, for which he has twice won the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form. He was also a managing editor of The New York Review of Science Fiction from 1988 to 1993, for which he was nominated for the Hugo Award a number of times. As of January 2015, Van Gelder has stepped down as editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction in favour of Charles Coleman Finlay, but remains publisher of the magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 23, 2020
"The Men Who Murdered Mohammed," by Alfred Bester (1958): 8.25
- Bester's trademark bravura style — really quite unique for his time and field — is tamped down enough to work for me here, even if the central conceit plays off a bit shaggy.
"Delenda Est," by Poul Anderson: 8.5
- [If review seems flip, because it was the final of four reviewing Anderson's Time Patrol omnibus] And here we’ve given ourselves over entirely to alternate history, in which a change among Punic War Bigs finally does alter the difficult to alter. Our boy’s at it, clearly, and the sad sack succeeds, even if he can’t get the girl. Remember, for all the spilled ink, these are kids stories.
“Two Dooms,” by C. M. Kornbluth: 7.25
- Well, you can’t say he didn’t stick to the bit. His remit here: present a dire depiction of defeated, occupied America. So he does. Our protagonist wanders through different geological expressions of said desiccation – desert, heartland, farming, city – as both he and the reader wait for the inevitable moment at which he’ll come across some semblance of urban civilization (even of the kind available only to the occupying powers). It never happens; it’s a vision of unremitting despondence, penury, and suffering, gradually ramping up and up in a way that verged right on the edge of laughably bleak (pulled off, only, by the deadpan style entered into for the presentation of the greatest depravities later in the story [ie the Race Scientist telling him, after he’s volunteered for a position as ‘lab assistant,’ that he’s to be dissected]. In the case of that endeavor, an unqualified success, and one that puts later Nazis-Win Alt Hists to shame (is that our metric?), even if that success nonetheless simultaneously relies upon an element that constitutes the weaknesses of the story: the jejeune simple-minded understanding of Axis evil and ideology. (Or, to wit, their history: to what end, other than the in-the-moment shock of it, the erasure of Hitler from the alternate history at work here? And how does that actually work within the time-traveling mechanisms within the story? I can’t really think of any other AltHists where the jonbar point is not a jonbar point – he leaves in ’44, but his future [a dream is it?] has history shifted from at least the late 20s? [if we’re to believe Goebbels ascendance and Hitler’s subordination (itself a queer supposition, esp. with the understanding of Kornbluth’s time, considering how much pop history placed in the ‘unique charisma’ of Hitler as reason for Machtergreifung! Hmm.)]) Regardless, as “story,” it’s lacking: the structure is a bit clunky, with the big jonbar explication coming whole-hog and out of nowhere, and the peyote-driven Indian mysticism parallel-worlding hokey even for its own time. And then, the implications of the whole thing (we GOTTA drop the bomb cause look what’ll happen otherwise! [we get other nods in this direction throughout for those paying attention, ie America loses millions trying to launch an amphibious invasion against Japan itself]), something I’m sure gets the majority of ilk spilled over this story, but one that doesn’t bother me much, again considering how these things go. As is, though, an interesting example of a type of inadvertent conservatism in genre work – an oft-ignored subgenre in contemporary criticism, given all the overt examples to choose from.
- Bester's trademark bravura style — really quite unique for his time and field — is tamped down enough to work for me here, even if the central conceit plays off a bit shaggy.
"Delenda Est," by Poul Anderson: 8.5
- [If review seems flip, because it was the final of four reviewing Anderson's Time Patrol omnibus] And here we’ve given ourselves over entirely to alternate history, in which a change among Punic War Bigs finally does alter the difficult to alter. Our boy’s at it, clearly, and the sad sack succeeds, even if he can’t get the girl. Remember, for all the spilled ink, these are kids stories.
“Two Dooms,” by C. M. Kornbluth: 7.25
- Well, you can’t say he didn’t stick to the bit. His remit here: present a dire depiction of defeated, occupied America. So he does. Our protagonist wanders through different geological expressions of said desiccation – desert, heartland, farming, city – as both he and the reader wait for the inevitable moment at which he’ll come across some semblance of urban civilization (even of the kind available only to the occupying powers). It never happens; it’s a vision of unremitting despondence, penury, and suffering, gradually ramping up and up in a way that verged right on the edge of laughably bleak (pulled off, only, by the deadpan style entered into for the presentation of the greatest depravities later in the story [ie the Race Scientist telling him, after he’s volunteered for a position as ‘lab assistant,’ that he’s to be dissected]. In the case of that endeavor, an unqualified success, and one that puts later Nazis-Win Alt Hists to shame (is that our metric?), even if that success nonetheless simultaneously relies upon an element that constitutes the weaknesses of the story: the jejeune simple-minded understanding of Axis evil and ideology. (Or, to wit, their history: to what end, other than the in-the-moment shock of it, the erasure of Hitler from the alternate history at work here? And how does that actually work within the time-traveling mechanisms within the story? I can’t really think of any other AltHists where the jonbar point is not a jonbar point – he leaves in ’44, but his future [a dream is it?] has history shifted from at least the late 20s? [if we’re to believe Goebbels ascendance and Hitler’s subordination (itself a queer supposition, esp. with the understanding of Kornbluth’s time, considering how much pop history placed in the ‘unique charisma’ of Hitler as reason for Machtergreifung! Hmm.)]) Regardless, as “story,” it’s lacking: the structure is a bit clunky, with the big jonbar explication coming whole-hog and out of nowhere, and the peyote-driven Indian mysticism parallel-worlding hokey even for its own time. And then, the implications of the whole thing (we GOTTA drop the bomb cause look what’ll happen otherwise! [we get other nods in this direction throughout for those paying attention, ie America loses millions trying to launch an amphibious invasion against Japan itself]), something I’m sure gets the majority of ilk spilled over this story, but one that doesn’t bother me much, again considering how these things go. As is, though, an interesting example of a type of inadvertent conservatism in genre work – an oft-ignored subgenre in contemporary criticism, given all the overt examples to choose from.
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February 3, 2013Among the most memorable of the tales here is "The Last Article" by Harry Turtledove, which presents a past in which Germany overthrew the British rule in India and then speculates as to the direction the ensuing freedom protests by the native Indian population might have taken. Bringing Gandhi's creed of nonviolence face-to-face with Nazi ideologies generates a number of compelling issues, but Turtledove's story does not simply devolve into an exercise in comparative philosophy. The strength of the story lies in the emotional vibrancy with which he imbues his main characters. Gandhi, Nehru, and even the German field marshal put in charge of occupied India, are each complicated, often conflicted, characters whose complexity lets the reader understand them as something more than mere embodiments of the respective ideologies each represents. The end result is a tale not only entertaining as alternate history but also useful as a took for better understanding the actual events of World War II and the British colonial experience.
Poul Anderson's 1955 classic "Delenda Est" is also included here, as is one of Robert Silverberg's popular Roma Eterna stories, "Hero of the Empire". Plus eleven more tales by such great writers as Charles Coleman Finlay, James Morrow, Ben Bova, and Paul Di Filippo, with temporal settings that include both World Wars, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and more...
Poul Anderson's 1955 classic "Delenda Est" is also included here, as is one of Robert Silverberg's popular Roma Eterna stories, "Hero of the Empire". Plus eleven more tales by such great writers as Charles Coleman Finlay, James Morrow, Ben Bova, and Paul Di Filippo, with temporal settings that include both World Wars, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and more...
September 20, 2015
Some extremely well written short stories and some that I couldn't get into. The good far out weight the bad.
Basically all are in one way or another alternate history stories.
I absolutely loved Bradley Denton's 'The Territory' featuring a young Mark Train and the raid on Lawrence, Kansas.
One of my favorite authors, Harry Turtledove, wrote "The Last Article'. The Nazi's have won WWII and taken over Indian and are now faced with Gandhi who just doesn't understand how a civilized country like Germany could be so....uncivilized.
These stories, plus several others, are well worth the price.
Basically all are in one way or another alternate history stories.
I absolutely loved Bradley Denton's 'The Territory' featuring a young Mark Train and the raid on Lawrence, Kansas.
One of my favorite authors, Harry Turtledove, wrote "The Last Article'. The Nazi's have won WWII and taken over Indian and are now faced with Gandhi who just doesn't understand how a civilized country like Germany could be so....uncivilized.
These stories, plus several others, are well worth the price.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews